Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Jamelle Bouie sent this along in his newsletter today and I thought is was perfect for the moment:

Most Americans who know of Frederick Douglass know that he lived to see the destruction of chattel slavery and the liberation of Black Americans from the despotism of human bondage. Less well known is the fact that Douglass would also live long enough to see the slave stand free, stand a brief moment in the sun, and move back again toward slavery, to paraphrase W.E.B. Du Bois in his book “Black Reconstruction.”

Douglass died in 1895 as the counterrevolution to Reconstruction and the agrarian rebellions of the 1880s and 1890s took final shape. In 1890, Mississippi imposed its Jim Crow Constitution. Other states in the South soon followed suit. In 1896, the Supreme Court would affirm “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, a landmark ruling that would stand until 1954, when it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1894, at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C., Douglass delivered the last great speech of his career. Titled “The Lessons of the Hour,” it was his attempt to make sense of the rise of Jim Crow and the violent retrenchment of the era. I want to share a little of the speech with you because I think it is worthwhile to read the perspective of someone who continues to fight for their ideals even in the midst of profound reversal and defeat.

Here’s Douglass, moving toward his conclusion.

I have sometimes thought that the American people are too great to be small, too just and magnanimous to oppress the weak, too brave to yield up the right to the strong, and too grateful for public services ever to forget them or fail to reward them. I have fondly hoped that this estimate of American character would soon cease to be contradicted or put in doubt. But the favor with which this cowardly proposition of disfranchisement has been received by public men, white and black, by Republicans as well as Democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation. I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me.

He continues:

Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the lustre of the American name, and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man than I am, who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop.

As much as Douglass intends to stand in the way of those would destroy the victory of an earlier age, he knows that, for him, “Time and strength are not equal to the task before me.” And yet:

But could I be heard by this great nation, I would call to mind the sublime and glorious truths with which, at its birth, it saluted a listening world. Its voice then, was as the trumpet of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression and time honored tyranny, to judgement. Crowned heads heard it and shrieked. Toiling millions heard it and clapped their hands for joy. It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages.

Douglass concludes:

Apply these sublime and glorious truths to the situation now before you. Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another. Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest, and your problem will be solved; and, whatever may be in store for it in the future, whether prosperity, or adversity; whether it shall have foes without, or foes within, whether there shall be peace, or war; based upon the eternal principles of truth, justice and humanity, and with no class having any cause of complaint or grievance, your Republic will stand and flourish forever.

I hope you find this as useful as I do.

Or we could keep coddling insecure white people who feel their privilege is threatened whenever those who don’t look like them get a share of the American dream. And sure, let’s let the oligarchs openly pull the strings of our supposedly democratic system for their own benefit. What could go wrong?

I’m just going to leave this here. If you have a few minutes, listen to Project 2025 author Russell Vought, Trump’s budget chief, talk about what he plans to do in the new administration. He’s not just a faceless bureaucrat. He’s got a vision. A Christian Nationalist vision.

Remember this guy? Trump just made him director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Shout-out to everyone who tried to convince us he knew nothing about Project 2025. pic.twitter.com/t6RdA7xccq

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 23, 2024

I’m sure Pam Bondi will be more than happy to do this. She wouldn’t have been chosen for the job if she wasn’t:

President-elect Donald Trump plans to fire the entire team that worked with special counsel Jack Smith to pursue two federal prosecutions against the former president, including career attorneys typically protected from political retribution, according to two individuals close to Trump’s transition.

Trump is also planning to assemble investigative teams within the Justice Department to hunt for evidence in battleground states that fraud tainted the 2020 election, one of the people said.

The proposals offer new evidence that Trump’s intention to dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington is likely to focus heavily on the Justice Department, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, and that at least some of his agenda is fueled not by ideology or policy goals but personal grievance.

Asked about Trump’s plans to fire prosecutors on Smith’s team and investigate the 2020 election, a Trump spokeswoman echoed the president-elect’s frequent claim that the Justice Department cases against him were politically motivated.

[…]

As he again becomes president, Trump “wants to clean out the bad guys, the people who went after me,’” said one of the individuals familiar with the plans, who like the other person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations about the incoming Trump administration.

I guess we knew he was going to go after the prosecutors who were involved in his federal cases. And that won’t be all. There are political enemies and others that will need to be paid back for opposing him. But I didn’t anticipate investigations into the 2020 election, although I should have.

He knows he lost and his psyche is so fragile that he can’t deal with it even though he won this time. Maybe he can find some flunkies to put together a phony report validating his claims and he and his cult can pretend that proves it. But we’ll always know that he lost that election and lied about it and he’ll know we know it. It will torture him until the day he dies.

Start hoarding your necessary meds right now. It’s going to be a long 4 years:

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he would nominate Dr. Martin A. Makary, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon with a contrarian streak, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Trump announced two other top health picks on Friday evening as well. He chose Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and former congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For years, Dr. Weldon championed the notion that thimerosal, a preservative once used widely in vaccines, caused an explosion of autism cases around the world. In 2007, he backed a bill proposing to take vaccine safety research out of the hands of the C.D.C. Health officials reject the idea that research shows any link between thimerosal and autism.

Mr. Trump also put forward Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a physician and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general. She worked caring for patients after Hurricane Katrina, an announcement from Mr. Trump said, and on the front lines of the Covid pandemic in New York City. She also markets vitamin B and vitamin C dietary supplements.

Dr. Makary, 54, rose to prominence more than a decade ago as a critic of the medical establishment, speaking out about patient safety and working with hospitals to improve practices. He also gained attention during the pandemic, weighing in on herd immunity, vaccines and masks in 2021, roiling some doctors who were still contending with packed I.C.U.s and hundreds of deaths a week.

[…]

Dr. Makary would oversee an agency that regulates a vast swath of the economy, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, revolutionary cell and gene therapies as well as food, medical devices, tobacco and cosmetics.

Every last one is a Fox news crank, a quack or a snake oil salesman. Good luck to all of us.

Update —

In recently unearther video, RFK Jr calims that his organization financed “Plandemic” the conspiracy theory documentary that killed a bunch of people during COVID:

We also have a film platform. We have a film division at Children’s Health Defense. We’ve produced two films. One of them is VAX 2, which was, you know, a huge success. And then Plandemic, which we financed, which is now by some metrics the most successful documentary in history. I think it’s had 25 million views. Even though they threw us off all the social media, we were able to still get a lot of people to see that film.

Out of the news but not out of the woods

A friend last night asked how recovery was coming along here in Asheville. The truth is we are out of the news but a long way from out of the woods. 

Some friends were in the Oval Office on Thursday to ask President Joe Biden to add a zero to the end of federal recovery aid already approved for Western North Carolina. Or at least for another $25.5 billion. The group also met with congressional budget staff on Capitol Hill to promote a larger aid package.

Locals are hoping the supplemental aid passes quickly because the next occupant won’t be as friendly to ye olde Cesspool of Sin™. The GOP-dominated legislature in Raleigh is already cutting us off. More on that in a moment.

This week, I sat down with @NC_Governor and elected officials from western North Carolina to thank them in person for their partnership as we continue our focus on hurricane recovery.

We're doing everything we can to get your communities what they need in these difficult times. pic.twitter.com/ad8Ti8s2h8

— President Biden (@POTUS) November 21, 2024

Recovery will take years. Downtown Asheville normally would be bustling with shoppers this time of year. For a local economy overdependent on tourism (don’t get me started), empty hotels and shops are dead weight on the city’s economy and on out-of-workers’ lives. Some storefronts are empty and for rent. Residents who left the area during the seven-week water outage may have found work where they relocated already, and may not return.

Recovery depots are still in operation for people (fewer now) from more remote areas of the county still without power or with contaminated wells needing testing, or with homes too damaged to be habitable.

It’s not in the news but it is still the reality on the ground. The town may look normal but normal will not return soon.

Disaster victims still need showers, laundry facilities, supplies, etc. A Board of Elections members told me on Friday relations are still camping out in her house eight weeks after Tropical Storm Helene dropped off a disaster.

A FEMA map I obtained on Friday (dated 11/19) displays the numbers of privately owned and rental residences impacted across Western North Carolina. The largest concentrations are in Buncombe County (Asheville metro). 

• 542 homes destroyed
• 1,600 homes with major damage
• 18,102 homes requiring habitability repairs

There are another 6,000+ rental residences destroyed, damaged, or requiring habitability repairs, meaning structural repairs and/or replacement of appliances and heating/cooling/plumbing/electrical systems.

Thanks to the New York Times for covering what I said on the floor: this is not a recovery bill — this is a purely partisan bill that takes aim at some of the foundational pillars of our democracy.https://t.co/2NzlFfXUJf

— Sen. Julie Mayfield (@MayfieldforNC) November 22, 2024

We mentioned this week North Carolina Republicans’ scramble in the lame-duck session to snatch power from Democrats who defeated their candidates under the guise of a disaster recovery measure. The GOP-dominated body remains “dead-set on refusing to provide meaningful relief for mountain communities hit hard by Hurricane Helene,” reports Smoky Mountain News.

“I’m deeply concerned that instead of help for Western North Carolina, that they used this storm as a front to engage in yet another power grab that I think hurts North Carolina,” Cooper told The Smoky Mountain News Nov. 22.

Three WNC Republicans voted against the bill but are likely to vote to sustain an expected Cooper veto. Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers, whose town flooded just three years ago, had stern words for Raleigh:

Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers praised the three western reps for sticking up for a region that consistently feels overlooked by Raleigh — perhaps for good reason.

“What you saw was fundamental, principled leadership and doing right by the people of Western North Carolina. That was not a hurricane relief bill; it was a bill that was trying to be marketed as one. Even when talking about the money, it just shifts money. It doesn’t allocate where it goes,” said Smathers. “It was a bill that was done behind closed doors, very quickly and not involving even the Republicans, even our own legislators. This is a bill that should not have been passed and should not exist and should be vetoed. And if it was Democrats doing it, I would say the same thing.”

Plenty of videos and podcasts (some of them sensationalized) show destroyed homes, crushed cars and piles of debris and downed trees along roadsides in residential neighborhoods and in more outlying areas. The destruction is not just along the rivers but on hillsides hit by slides and flattened by tornadoes or microbursts. Sometimes only a few yards and a few feet of elevation separate devastation and “normal.” No one really knows how long the cleanup will take.

Officials report 103 deaths across WNC, with 43 in my county, Buncombe. Our house painter reports he lost one of his best crew members to the storm.

A friend just returned from Hawaii reports that a year later the burned city of Lahaina is still a wasteland. They feel us, he said. We feel them.

“Who will be the targets tomorrow?”

This speech by then-Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in November 1994 was prophetic.

30 years ago today, I warned that America was becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind, whose anger and disillusionment could be easily manipulated.

I took a lot of heat for this speech at the time. Watch and tell me if I was wrong. pic.twitter.com/KcU7SVCiNT

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 22, 2024

Did anyone listen?

Animal Thanksgiving!

That’s from a couple of years ago, but I have to assume that zoos around the country will be doing something similar this year. Those are lemurs enjoying their T-Day dinner.

The Oregon zoo:

Denver Zoo:

We aren’t the only ones feasting today! Our leucistic raccoon sisters, Pecan and Cashew, enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving feast made up of hard-boiled eggs, clams, crawfish, pineapple, edamame, sweet potato, green beans, peas and carrots. Raccoons are omnivores, so these items are all staples of their daily diet. Our Nutrition Team presented these foods in a fun new way for our girls!

These goats at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, had a lot to be thankful for this season, given a huge Thanksgiving feast of vegetarian fare and even “mocktails” made from beet juice, according to the zoo.

The richest man in the world is getting a lesson in Trump.

Doubts abound as to whether he will graduate in 2028 with a four-year degree in Trumpism: It is now a parlor game in Washington and Silicon Valley to speculate just how long the Musk-Trump relationship will last. The answer, as discarded aides from Mr. Trump’s first term will tell you, may depend on Mr. Musk’s ability to placate the boss and keep a relatively low profile — but also to shiv a rival when the time comes.

In short, how to play the politics of Trumpworld.

Most of the people who now surround Mr. Trump in the transition are battle-tested aides from his past fights, or decades-long personal friends. Mr. Musk is neither. What he brings instead are his 200 million followers on X and the roughly $200 million he spent to help elect Mr. Trump. Both of those have greatly impressed the president-elect. Mr. Trump, gobsmacked by Mr. Musk’s willingness to lay off 80 percent of the staff at X, has said the tech billionaire will help lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.

I just love the fact that Trump thinks laying off staff at a social media platform (which, by the way, has become a total wingnut sewer and is failing at a rapid rate) is equivalent in any way to “reforming” the US Government. It’s absurd. Especially when you hear something like this:

In private meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Musk shows little familiarity with policy or the potential staff members being discussed, but he returns repeatedly to a central point: What is required, he says, is “radical reform” of government and “reformers” who are capable of executing radical changes, according to two people briefed on the meetings, who insisted on anonymity to describe the internal conversations.

He’s no genius, I’m sorry. He’s a talented entrepreneur, obviously, but there’s no reason to believe he understands anything other than that. When it comes to philosophy, ideology, politics, history — the world — he’s no better than your average right wing troll on Truth Social, operating from a gut that favors bigotry, selfishness and stupidity. He’s clueless about government and he’s going to crash and burn.

He’s already feeling the need to lick some boot:

On Wednesday, in response to a headline describing him as Mr. Trump’s “closest confidant,” the tech billionaire went out of his way to praise “the large number of loyal, good people at Mar-a-Lago who have worked for him for many years.”

“To be clear, while I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates, many selections occur without my knowledge and decisions are 100% that of the President,” he wrote on X.

It appeared to be a recognition of a well-known lesson in Trumpworld: Don’t outshine the boss. At least if you want to stay awhile.

Mick Mulvaney says that Musk should be Trump’s “straight shooter” who tells it like it is:

“What makes Musk such a valuable adviser,” Mr. Mulvaney told The Times in an interview, “is that he has enough money — and enough other things to do — that he is uniquely situated to be the bearer of honest news. More than perhaps anybody else on the planet, he doesn’t need the job.”

Oh for sure! Musk needs to be up in Trump’s fave constantly telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. That’s the perfect job for him and Trump will be so appreciative. He respects that sort of thing.

It’s not going to work out. Right now Trump may be enjoying the fact that the richest man in the world is his BFF. But before too long he’s going to realize that the richest man in the world is trying to usurp him — the most powerful man in the world — and he’s going to get sick of him. At this point I wouldn’t bet on Musk being around even 3 months from now.

Trump is choosing people based on how they defend him on television and (surprise!) that’s not the best way to vet people for big jobs in the government. He’s already lost Gaetz. Who’s next?

The Wall St. Journal sez:

Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team were blindsided by the latest details to emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing their frustration with the man nominated to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The transition team, which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room.

The Monterey police said a redacted version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021. The transition team wasn’t told that a copy of the police report had been released to Hegseth previously, the people familiar with the discussions said.

“This is another instance of people being blindsided, so I think there’s rising frustration there,” said a person familiar with the transition. While the president-elect is still behind Hegseth for now, “if this continues to be a drumbeat and the press coverage continues to be bad, particularly on TV, then I think there is a real chance that he loses Trump’s confidence.”

Perhaps the great Colossus of Mar-a-lago may not be able to force through his daft TV rogues gallery after all? On the other hand he doesn’t really care about any of them. He just wants people who will carry out his revenge plans and there are plenty of those to choose from in today’s GOP. No big loss.

Tom wrote about the the ever slipping “mandate” this morning, quoting from that NY Times piece “The Landslide That Wasn’t.” Mar-a-lago is hopping mad:

Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Friday took aim at Politico and The New York Times for reporting on the fact that President-elect Trump didn’t win the popular vote by some resounding majority.

It was not massive and it was not historic. In fact, Harris has now received almost a quarter of a million more votes than Trump did in the higher turnout election of 2020 — you remember the ine he bragged about being the highest number by any incumbent in history?

Basically, we’re back to crowd size arguments. And if you ask a Trump supporter what’s going on they’ll either say the votes counted since election day are all fraudulent or that it’s fake news. Deal Leader got the greatest victory in the history of the world. Everyone knows that.